Hacker News: eleveriven

New comment by eleveriven in "The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert"

eleveriven — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:15:41 +0000

The part I'm struggling with is where "neuroplasticity" turns into "your psyche collapses". That sounds more like a metaphor than an actual mechanism

New comment by eleveriven in "The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert"

eleveriven — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:10:33 +0000

Did it actually change anything for you long-term or was it mostly profound while it was happening?

New comment by eleveriven in "The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert"

eleveriven — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:08:40 +0000

This seems like one of those areas where "double-blind randomized trial" sounds much cleaner on paper than it actually is. If nearly everyone can tell whether they got the drug, expectancy becomes a pretty nasty confound

New comment by eleveriven in "The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert"

eleveriven — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:06:19 +0000

Yeah, "psychedelic toad" sounds a lot more whimsical until you actually live somewhere they show up in the backyard

New comment by eleveriven in "The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert"

eleveriven — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:02:18 +0000

How a tiny self-published pamphlet apparently created a whole practice that was later documented as if it had some deeper historical tradition behind it

New comment by eleveriven in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

eleveriven — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:13:42 +0000

The part that bothers me is that preservation has become the customer's problem while continued access remains the vendor's decision

New comment by eleveriven in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

eleveriven — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:11:22 +0000

The most damning part is that signing in isn't some obscure edge case. It's the front door to one of the biggest games ever made

New comment by eleveriven in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

eleveriven — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:09:05 +0000

The difference is that Linux usually fails loudly and gives you something to investigate. Microsoft software often fails behind five layers of UI etc.

New comment by eleveriven in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

eleveriven — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:07:07 +0000

The hardest part of the Halo 1 campaign is apparently defeating Microsoft account creation

New comment by eleveriven in "How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues"

eleveriven — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:07:12 +0000

I like the idea of treating limewash as maintenance rather than a permanent cure. That is probably closer to how these materials were historically used anyway

New comment by eleveriven in "How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues"

eleveriven — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:04:49 +0000

This makes me want to see lime used more in ordinary homes

New comment by eleveriven in "How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues"

eleveriven — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:02:56 +0000

Yet carbonation is not universally helpful

New comment by eleveriven in "Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees"

eleveriven — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:43:29 +0000

I think the problem is that these things can both be true. Pesticides can be a much bigger threat to native insects, while dense managed honeybee populations can still put extra pressure on native bees in some places

New comment by eleveriven in "Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees"

eleveriven — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:40:58 +0000

The hard part is probably that "native bees" are not a drop-in replacement for managed hives you can put on a truck and move between farms

New comment by eleveriven in "Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees"

eleveriven — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:38:10 +0000

I had no idea winter survival could come down to getting one brief warm spell at the right time so the colony can loosen up and move a few inches

New comment by eleveriven in "Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees"

eleveriven — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:36:05 +0000

Wow... And I think designing the hive so the bees' own grooming behavior is actually effective seems like a much better first line of defense

New comment by eleveriven in "Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees"

eleveriven — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:30:17 +0000

Spider venom saving bees was not on my bingo card, but this is genuinely cool. Obviously "works on mites in the lab" is a long way from "works safely and cheaply in a real hive", but varroa is such a nasty problem that even a new direction is worth paying attention to

New comment by eleveriven in "More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)"

eleveriven — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:50:28 +0000

In some ways the more interesting question might become whether Martian life, if found, shares the same basic biochemistry as Earth life

New comment by eleveriven in "More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)"

eleveriven — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:47:30 +0000

Maybe benevolent in the same way a heat-ray is a form of urban renewal

New comment by eleveriven in "More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)"

eleveriven — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:45:18 +0000

What I like about Mars stories like this is that they are a good antidote to both extremes: "we found life!" and "there is nothing interesting here"